Saturday, January 12, 2008

Kudos for Chicken Soup by Heart

The 2003 Sydney Taylor Book Award winner for Younger Readers was Chicken Soup by Heartby Esther Hershenhorn, and it has stood the test of time. It was just featured as a favorite book on the blog of Scholastic.com in their Parents section. The blogger, Els Kushner (aka "Librarian Mom"), describes cuddling with her sick daughter and reading to her, then goes on to list books having to do with feeling sick.

...a couple of my favorite picture books about illness:

Chicken Soup by Heart, by Esther Hershenhorn, ill. by Roseanne Litzinger. Rudie Dinkins’s sitter, Mrs. Gittel, always knows just how to take care of him when he has a “Rudie Dinkins chest cold.” But now Mrs. Gittel has the flu herself. With his mom’s help. Rudie fixes up a batch of special chicken soup, mixed in with stories and memories.

This is one of those rare and special books that you have to read aloud to truly appreciate. When I skimmed through this book silently, I liked the illustrations but the text didn’t jump out at me. But when I read it to a class, the words sang, and I understood why it won the Sydney Taylor Book Award in 2003. A warm and sweet treat.

For the full post, listing various other titles about illness, click here.